Wheaton Franciscan Sisters Project Page

“An accurate map of North America: drawn from the best modern maps and charts, and regulated by astron'l. observants” by Edmund Burke (1757)

European Treatment Report

Contextualization Conversation

Land-history research for 26W171 Roosevelt Rd., Wheaton, IL

“Map of the New Discovery Made by the Jesuit Fathers in 1672 and Continued by Father Jacques Marquette, from the Same Group, Accompanied by a Few Frenchmen in the Year 1673, Named ‘Manitounie,’” by Jacques Marquett and Louis Jolliet (1673)

“Pere Marquette and the Indians [at the Mississippi River],” by Wilhelm Lamprecht (1869)

European Contact

The Doctrine of Discovery Wheaton

“Leaders of the Continental Congress. John Adams, Morris, Hamilton, Jefferson,” by Augustus Tholey (c. 1894)

Settler Colonialism

The Treaty Period

Good Faith.

“The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights and liberty, they never shall be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorised by Congress; but laws found in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.”

“An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States, North-west of the river Ohio,” passed by the Continental Congress (July 13, 1787)

Treaty of Greenville with the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanoes, Otttawas, Chipewas, Potawatimes, Miamis, Eel-river, Weea’s, Kickapoosm Piankashaws, and Kaskaskias (Aug. 3, 1795)

Protect.

“If any citizen of the United States, or any other white person or persons shall presume to settle upon the lands now relinquished by the United States, such citizen or other person shall be out of the protection of the United States; and the Indian tribe, on whose land the settlement shall be made, may drive off the settler, or punish him in such manner as they shall think fit; and . . . the United States shall be at liberty to break them up and remove and punish the settlers as they shall thing proper, and so effect that protection of the Indian lands[.]”

Treaty of Greenville with the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanoes, Otttawas, Chipewas, Potawatimes, Miamis, Eel-river, Weea’s, Kickapoosm Piankashaws, and Kaskaskias (Aug. 3, 1795)

Posthumous portrait of John Henry Eaton by Robert Walter Weir (1873)

Collisions.

“The great object is to relieve these regions of the present claimants who can never work the mining with any advantage to themselves; and by so doing quiet the agitations of that frontier; by leaving the title to its occupancy by our citizens free from the collisions which have heretofore so often disturbed the peace of that frontier.”

Instruction of John Henry Eaton, Secretary of War, to treaty commissioners (March 30, 1829)

Drawing of President Andrew Jackson by James Barton Longacre (1829)

Civilization.

“What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion?”

President Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress “On Indian Removal,” (Dec. 6, 1830)

Photograph of Potowatomi leader and treaty signer Shab-eh-nay (Shabbona, Shaubena) by W.E. Bowman (c. 1858)

Desecrated.

“Their wigwams have disappeared from the groves, the smoke of their camp fires no longer ascends above the trees, the crack of their rifles and bay of their dogs are no more heard, their canoes are not seen on the rivers and lakes, and their once familiar war whoops have ceased to echo through the timber. The sacred places of the red man have been desecrated by the whites, and by them the graves of their fathers have been plowed over, and the guardian spirits watching over them driven away.”

From “Memories of Shaubena,” by Nehemiah Matson (1878)